As the stalemate in Washington continues, some GOP supporters are casting the government shutdown as not that big a deal.
The House planned to vote Wednesday on a group of smaller funding bills to temporarily restore funding for national parks, medical research, pay for military reservists and the District of Columbia, NBC News confirmed. But some Republicans haven’t given up on their demand to defund or delay Obamacare in return for funding the federal government–a total deal breaker, the White House has said repeatedly.
“Consideration of appropriations bills in a piecemeal fashion is not a serious or responsible way to run the United States Government. Instead of opening up a few Government functions, the House of Representatives should re-open all of the Government,” said a statement released Wednesday by the White House budget office.
On the front page of its website Wednesday afternoon, Fox News referred to the ordeal as a “slimdown of government.”
This so-called “slimdown” has forced about 800,000 to go without pay until Congress figures out a viable solution. Cancer patients are also being turned away from clinics and Head Start will no longer feed pre-schoolers in need while the shutdown lasts.
GOP pundits and a few elected officials showed a questionable amount of empathy towards these Americans directly impacted by the first government shutdown in 17 years. Here are some of the most eyebrow-raising comments from the right:
Rep. John Mica of Florida:
“Even Bill Clinton–after I voted to impeach him–would work with you to get things done, and we got things done. We had a shutdown then–this isn’t the end of the world. They’re 17 shutdowns. And some good came out of that shutdown. It was a horrible thing, we don’t need to repeat them, we don’t need to have this one. But, we did balance the budget–we balanced the budget with a Republican Congress working with a Democrat president.”
Radio host Laura Ingraham:
“When the president came out yesterday, and he went through the list of what wasn’t going to change–-he said, ‘Well, we’ll have air traffic controllers, Medicare, you gotta go to your doctor…I was sitting there going, ‘Wait a second, he’s making the case for Republicans. This sounds pretty good!’”
The Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol:
“If there are genuine human emergencies the Republican House should move to fund those relevant programs…But a one- or two-week shutdown is not going to be the end of the world and if you can’t go into the Smithsonian.”
Fox News anchor Sean Hannity:
“Maybe I’m just one of the few people…this doesn’t impact me mentally. We’ve had 17 government shutdowns…I’m not afraid of a couple of weeks of government being shut down.”
Rep. James Lankford of Oklahoma:
“It’s really a government slowdown more than a shutdown. People in my office have already been notified which would be furloughed, which would be maintained. That will happen in government offices and already has happened this past week in government offices all over the country…we’ll function at a slower level for several days until we can get this resolved.
Sarah Muller